


Recovery

by Passions



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), World Is Not Enough (1999)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:53:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Passions/pseuds/Passions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Belle loses Rumple in a battle against Regina she moves to London and ends up working for MI6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

When it had all finished Belle hadn’t been able to think about anything but getting out.

_After Cora’s death, Regina had gone on the warpath. She’d tried to be subtle, at first. Tried to do as much damage to Snow as she could without letting Henry see the bad she was doing. It hadn’t been enough, apparently._

_Snow had a strong circle of friends who had supported her and every day that she stood strong was another crack in Regina’s facade._

_It was very clear that Regina truly loved Henry, but it was equally clear she would be willing to waste everything and anything that got in her way of being with him - regardless of what that meant for him. Henry had finally gained the family he had always been looking for and Regina was only too happy to destroy it entirely._

_Regina’s love was a selfish one. Henry loved her, he never denied it, always made sure the rest of his family wouldn’t hurt her. But she couldn’t see that. It wasn’t enough. He cared about other people and thus must care about her less. So she had to get rid of the other people he cared for. The amount of damage that would inflict on her son didn’t seem to bother her._

_Most of what happened Belle heard second hand once **he** had returned to town. She had been locked up in the hospital and drugged for a great many of the showdowns between Henry’s birth family and his adoptive mother. _

_Once he got back, though, he’d worked tirelessly to return her memories to her._

_So she was aware of him and her love for him when the end came._

_They had all stayed together, hiding from Regina’s wrath: Belle and her True Love, his son Neal, Emma, Henry, Snow and Charming, and Neal’s finace, Tamara. Neal and Charming wanted to take the fight to Regina, but Belle’s Love had suggested caution and Belle, Emma, and Snow had agreed with the sorcerer. Henry had been terribly reluctant to see his parents fight each other, and the pink house was large and well-protected._

_And then came the day that everything changed._

_Henry disappeared._

_Everyone was frantic with worry, trying to find the boy that was so very precious to all of them, that it took them far longer than it should have to notice that Tamara was also gone._

_An hour after they first found Henry missing a huge BOOM had resonated through the house. Regina had been standing outside, throwing spell after spell at the wards on the building. She had asked to see her son._

_And then Tamara had appeared._

_She’d walked out of the forest that surrounded the large pink house, coming to stand a short way off, between the two feuding parties._

_She’d had Henry with her. And a gun to his head._

_Chaos had followed that. Neal screamed at Tamara, so very confused about why she was acting the way she was. Emma had her own gun pointed at the other woman but couldn’t risk taking a shot lest Henry get hurt. But their sorcerer was their best chance._

_It was Regina who saved Henry, in the end. Tamara had been so preoccupied with Belle’s Love, greedily trying to suck up his magic, or whatever that strange little device of hers did, that Regina was able to attack her from behind, ripping out her heart and crushing it into dust as the surprised woman turned around to look at her before collapsing._

_They’d thought it was done then, when Regina took Henry in her arms and everyone was safe._

_But then she had locked him in a cage of sparking magic as she turned on the family in front of the pink house. Tamara was proof, to her, that no one else would ever be able to protect her son. So she would destroy those who meant to take him away from her._

_Henry had screamed at her from his shining prison, his voice going hoarse, but she hadn’t listened._

_He had saved them. Despite the Charming family’s constant digs at his righteousness, Belle’s Love had thrown himself in front of Regina’s curses, returning her volleys with everything he had. But Tamara’s strange little machine had depleted his stores of energy drastically and Regina’s hits began to do more and more damage, though he gave as good as he got and Regina was weakening too. It was a close fight._

_Belle remembered him looking at her then, his lips shaping words, before he turned back to Regina and made some movement with his arms. There was a blinding flash of light before a moment of dead silence._

_And the Henry was racing into Emma’s arms, free of his prison._

_Belle smiled at the reunion, but it dropped off her face quickly when she glanced over to the combatants, both lying on the ground, motionless._

_And Belle screamed._

Belle gasped as she bolted up in bed, covered in cold sweat. She kicked the covers off as she brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her head upon them and trying to breathe deeply.

The nightmares were the worst part. Well, perhaps second-worst. She would happily keep the nightmares if it meant he could be with her again.

She couldn’t even say his name anymore. She’d said it too much.

Rumplestiltskin. Rumplestiltskin. Rumplestiltskin.

Say his name three times and he would appear. That was the legend was it not?

Rumplestiltskin. Rumplestiltskin. Rumplestiltskin.

After the funeral she had sat by his grave for most of a day, repeating his name over and over, praying to any deity that would listen to just give him back, until someone had forced her inside for dinner and sleep.

Two months she had managed to stay in Storybrooke. Feeling him everywhere, visiting the grave every day, praying every night.

But it was too much.

Snow and Charming wanted to help her, but she remembered how very ineffectual their help had been while she hadn’t had her memory.

Ruby offered her a place to stay, begged and pleaded for a chance to help, sobbed an apology for her actions while Belle had been in the hospital. Belle didn’t hate her. In fact she wanted the friendship she’d had with Ruby before the memory loss back more than anything. But the trust had been broken. Belle was broken. She couldn’t forgive. Not then.

Emma was a bit better, but Neal was grieving for the father he’d lost again. And though she grieved for the same man, she didn’t know Neal, and he didn’t know her. She didn’t properly know his father just as he didn’t really know her lover. And Emma needed to support him.

Belle had left Storybrooke. But she hadn’t left alone.

Jefferson had come with her. One of the few people she had actually grown closer to since her Love’s death. He wanted out of the town perhaps even more than Belle did and Grace was all too happy to come along. She’d missed her Papa.

Oddly enough, Victor had joined them as well.

Though he was a doctor, Belle didn’t blame him for what had happened at the hospital. He’d never been the one to harm her, and though he hadn’t been around often, when he was no one had touched her.

He said he needed to get away from the magic.

Even though the two magic wielders in town had perished, and the town line along with them, magic still existed in Storybrooke. Without the town line it would probably start seeping outwards as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They were none of them sure how they’d ended up in London, but they had. They shared a large flat with no real hardship. Jefferson still had access to all the money he controlled in this land, and Belle had received most of the financial leavings of her lover. She didn’t like to use them and she was never one to spend unnecessarily, but it kept the three of them comfortable.

Victor got a job at a close-by hospital, Belle chose to work at a bar - she didn’t want reminders of what she did in Storybrooke - , Jefferson chose to stay at home with his daughter, though eventually he enrolled her in school.

It was a testament to Jefferson’s skill with computers - he did have 28 years of utter boredom in which to learn everything there was to know - that it took almost a full year for MI6 to find them. They’d noticed him hacking into their servers - he said just for fun - and had spent a great many resources tracking him down. They’d chosen to offer him a position with them.

He’d begged Belle not to let them separate him from his daughter and Belle had managed to negotiate a deal wherein Jefferson would be allowed to work from home for the most part and would not be asked to join anything that might be dangerous.

Belle had a knack for negotiation. She’d been born to it in her aristocratic life in the Enchanted Forest and honed her skills as she watched her master turned lover fix his contracts both in the Dark Castle and in Storybrooke. MI6 had been impressed. They’d stayed longer while they called in one of their top hostage negotiators to interview her and she’d found herself with a job she’d never expected to have, but had no desire to turn down.

MI6 had suggested they separate from their third roommate, but upon finding that Victor was a doctor, they’d decided they could always use more medics and left a number for him to contact when he got home.

A year on and they were all still comfortably living together and well-entrenched in the British Secret Service.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Belle sighed as she walked to the kitchen for a glass of water. More than two years after the events in Storybrooke and the memories and nightmares were still readily available. Perhaps not as constant as they had been at the start, but she still couldn’t go more than a week without at least one sleepless night.

She drained the water from her glass and padded back into her bedroom, glancing at her clock. 4 am. Victor would be getting up at 5 so he could have a shower before they went into work together, so Belle decided to use the hour to take a bath.

Sometimes she had days like this, where she remembered his presence a little too strongly and her heart ached for want of him. Today was worse than usual though, and there was no explanation. She let her mind drift a bit as she soaked, but everything always came back to her loss. Sighing she let the water drain from the bathtub and moved into her room to get dressed.

She could hear the shower turn on as she slipped into a simple A-line blue dress with red stitching over black tights and covered by a black double breasted blazer that she left undone.

She padded out into the kitchen to make some toast, quickly eating her slices and leaving a few for Victor. Once the shower shut off and the door to his room closed, Belle hurried into the bathroom to do her hair and makeup before meeting Victor in the hallway as he finished his toast. He handed her her travel mug, which held tea, as she slipped into her heeled boots. His mug held coffee, she knew from experience. Their routine was pretty set in stone at this point. They hurried out the door and Victor locked it behind them before they took the elevator down to the garage.

As they approached the car, Victor looked at her, but she waved him off. She was tired, he could drive them in today.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Belle’s department was buzzing as she walked in which meant something major must have happened.

“Belle! There you are!” Maggie, one of Belle’s fellow negotiators, called out. “I was just going to call your cell!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Woman got kidnapped, some rich guy’s daughter. He’s an oil tycoon, friend of M’s.” Maggie grabbed Belle’s bag and dropped it at her desk, hustling her back out the door and down to the briefing room at the end of the hall where M and some others were waiting.

“Agent French, good.” M spoke up and touched the information screen on the other side of the room. A large picture of a beautiful young woman appeared.

“This is Elektra King. Daughter of Sir Robert King, who is heavily involved in oil and has a great many interests in the Middle East.

“She’s being held for ransom by this man, Victor Zokas.”

M touched the screen and another picture came up. Belle was glad the cup in her hand was steel and not paper as her hand clenched. Rumplestiltskin. Or what she imagined he would have looked like some years younger, with his head shaved. She managed to focus back on what M was saying.

“He calls himself Renard. He’s Bosnian born, a former KGB agent who was dismissed due to mental instability. Now he’s simply an anarchist, travelling and causing havoc wherever he can. He’s holding Elektra for a five million pound ransom. I need someone to negotiate for her safety. And I want that to be you, French.”

Belle looked back up at her director and nodded hard. “Yes ma’am.”

She would do what she could to help Elektra King and to help the broken man in the picture in front of her.

She would save them both.


End file.
